Chinese Blue and White, The Most Collected Chinese Porcelain For Over 700 Years

Collecting the Hottest Market on Earth, Chinese Porcelain

Chinese Blue and White, The Most Collected Chinese Porcelain For Over 700 Years

Every once in a while someone not familiar with Chinese antiques will ask:

"what is the most collected area of Chinese art?"

This question has come quite a few times this year as we were selling off the first part of a large collection of Chinese porcelain owned by an American businessman on behalf of his family. The collection contains in total over 6,000 pieces ranging in age from the Tang to Republican period. Including examples done in Sancai, Wucai, Doucai, Famille Rose, Famille Verte, Langyao, Flambe, Yixing and of course under glaze blue decorated pallets. NOTE: Starting in January of 2014 we will resume selling the items in weekly listings of roughly 60 to 70 items per week on EBAY under our user name "plcombs".

Their are after all literally hundreds of category's covering thousands of years of development utilizing a nearly countless list of materials. Including but certainly not limited to silk, jade, bronze, leather, bamboo, paper, numerous types of stone and wood, pottery, porcelain, silver, gold, coral, bone, ivory, glass, copper, pewter, Paktong, iron, fungus and even anthracite. In other words, if it's a material that can be found or made the Chinese have learned through the centuries at one time or another to work it as an art form.

The "David Vases", Yuan Period, British Museum

From all of these possibilities of interest one general category stands out above all others and that would be ceramics, including the earliest pottery, Imperial porcelain and Export Wares.

Among the objects falling into the ceramics category one type in particular for universal interest is and has been head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to collector interest. What kind you ask? Under glaze decorated blue and white porcelain.

No other area of Asian art comes close in universal collector interest, an interest which has endured and dominated for well over half a millennia. All of this contributes to why we titled this post "Chinese Blue and White, The Most Collected Chinese Porcelain For Over 700 Years", because it is.

Chinese Blue and White, its Infancy and Evolution

The earliest under glaze blue is believed to have begun in a limited way during the Tang Dyansty (618-906 AD), however it really didn't go into common usage until a better source of high quality Cobalt could be found a few hundred years later during the Yuan period when it was imported from Persia. Also, during the Tang period a fine quality highly vitrified porcelain of pure white color had yet to be developed, this happened during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) with the evolution of Qingbai wares.

Southern Song , Qingbai Kong

By the 13th C. the stage was set for the next evolution in ceramics, a change which profoundly changed the world of porcelain and Chinese art. Fine under glaze blue and white porcelain.

During the Yuan period (1271-1368 AD) the Mongols ruled not only China but most of the settled lands west of China extending to the Danube river. This massive empire, five times larger than that of Alexander the Great, also included Persia, the land of Cobalt!!

While the establishment of the Mongol empire was a violent one of epic scale, the resulting domain under the iron grip of Ghengis Khan and his decedents created ultimately a massive trading empire where safe passage from one land or region to the another was created. Goods flowed from the east to the west and vice versa.

Early on the Mongols in 1278 AD established the Fuliang Porcelain Bureau in Jingdezhen where the vast majority of all porcelains were being made. This bureau was established to oversee the production of porcelain for the Mongol court known as the Imperial Kiln. There they produced massive ewers, basins, bowls, ritual vessels and oil lamps etc.

The porcelains made during the Yuan period were a sharp departure from the production of the Song and Liao Dynasty's. The pieces became massive in comparison in order to meet the functional needs of the Mongol court for large serving and food dishes suitable for massive banquets. Soon these wares were being produced not only for the Yuan court but for export across the empire as well, through the extensive trading network established by the Mongols, not only by land but by sea as well.Movie Time!

Chinese Yuan Period Deep Plate, Circa 1350

Chinese Yuan Period Footed Bowl, Circa 1350

These larger pieces found immediate favor in the middle east, over the ensuing centuries thousands of examples through the Qing dynasty found their way there. Today the Topkapi Palace/Museum in Istanbul and Ardabil Shrine in Iran are repositories of some of the finest examples extant, numbering in the tens of thousands.

Yuan to Ming Porcelains
Ardabil Shrine, Iran 1885

This trading relationship endured and expanded for the next 700 years into the Ming and then the Qing dynasty. Eventually including all of Europe as well as North and South America. Today museums and collections around the world show the results of this long term trade, totaling millions of porcelains of varying quality and age.

Chinese Blue and White, Collecting Today

Whats in the Chinese Porcelain Market Now?

While finding top quality Yuan blue and white pieces floating around the market is a rare event as they can sell for millions of dollars, many great and very attractive late Yuan, Ming and Qing blue and white pieces do turn up in the market regularly.

However, with a little looking and learning about the subject, buying very fine quality blue and white examples for your own collection is within reach of most wallets. Happily the more you know about Chinese porcelain the more likely you will become in finding good examples before they are snapped up by dealers who will charge and arm and a leg for them.

NOTE: Over the last 20 years fraudsters in mainland China have managed to flood the market with stunningly good copies of some very rare types. They turn up regularly at auctions across America, Europe and in China. Today many collections in the west as well as China are largely composed of fakes. Read our other blogs on this topic and save yourself some disappointment.

Shown below are some examples we've had the opportunity to sell in the last few years, with the exception of the $18,000,000 bowl sold at Sotheby's in Hong Kong during the autumn of 2013. The vast majority of these sold for under $10,000 and several for under $1,000.

Bear in mind Chinese Blue and White porcelain when viewed as a commodity, has never in 700 years gone out of fashion nor gone down in value over the long run.

Song Qingbai Cup, 12th -13th C. (author's collection)

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The ability to make a fine porcelain by the end of the 13th C., enabled potters and artists to produce fine under glaze blue pieces once ample supplies of Cobalt could be brought from Persia.